A warm hand cupping his face made Shaw take a wet breath. Ice-blue eyes held his.

  “With me?” North asked.

  Shaw nodded.

  “Stay here. I don’t want you to see this.”

  “I can do it.”

  A look of something—not pity, although that was Shaw’s first guess, but something more complex and much more tender—flitted across North’s face. All he said was “I know you can, but I don’t want you to. Once you pick this shit up, you have a hard time putting it down. Just stay here.”

  “North, I can do this.”

  With a sigh, North elbowed open the door and called out, “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  The gust of death and corruption made Shaw gag, and he pulled his polo up to cover his nose as he followed North into the apartment.

  Part of Shaw’s brain ramped up. The part that never turned off, the part that Dr. Farr told him had to do with unregulated empathy, that part was incandescent, filaments of imagination branching off: Celia’s pain, Francis’s grief, Flip’s last moments alone before death.

  He was so caught up in those thoughts that it took him a moment to realize that the body lying in the center of the apartment wasn’t Flip. It was a girl. The heart-shaped face, the tight coils of hair, the too-thin arms and legs. It was Hiwet, the girl they had spoken to the night before, on the hill that looked down on the tennis courts.

  “She’s been shot,” North said from where he crouched near the body. “Twice.”

  Chapter 18

  THEY LOST THE REST of the day to the police: giving statements at the apartment, and then being carted off to the station to give their statements again. The hours dragged on. Shaw found himself wandering in a labyrinth of thoughts about Hiwet, trying to understand why she had been in an apartment that Flip had rented under a fake name, and then getting dragged down by the undercurrents of his own brain, lost in the pain and fear she must have felt at the end of her life. A moth was trapped behind the pebbled plastic cover of the light panel overhead. The fluorescent tubes fluttered in time with the trapped moth’s wings, and the stretches of darkness got longer and longer.

  “Shaw.”

  Shaw started. North was kneeling next to his chair, one hand on Shaw’s arm, one hand on Shaw’s knee. With a shaky grin, North smoothed Shaw’s hair. Then he gave the bun a tug. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “So, you’re kind of freaking me out.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You don’t need to be sorry. I just need to know if you’re ok.”

  “I’m ok.”

  North was silent a moment. Then he held out a wad of tissues, and Shaw took them and touched his face, surprised to find that he’d been crying.

  “Let’s go home,” North said.

  “We’re done?”

  Nodding, North stood and helped Shaw to his feet. They made their way to the Mercedes, and North took the keys without asking and drove them back to the house in Benton Park. The south side of St. Louis was a post-industrial warscape of rusted rails and Quonset huts, shipping containers and abandoned pallets. All of it lay under the ashy haze of ancient discharge lamps.

  When they pulled into the garage, Shaw said, “Do you mind if we don’t do a sleepover tonight?”

  “No, but I will point out that this is another reason why I wished we lived together. I don’t want you to be by yourself tonight.”

  Shaw said nothing.

  After a moment, North rubbed his eyes. “Are you sure you want to be alone?”

  Shaw nodded.

  “Let me rephrase that: I don’t want you to be alone.”

  “I’m just tired, North. And I’m not going to be good company.”

  “You’re always good company. I love you.” North took a breath and braced himself with both hands on the steering wheel. “I don’t know what to do. This world fucking sucks, and it hurts you, and it goes on hurting you, and I don’t know how to stop it or make it better or keep you safe.”

  The smile felt wan on Shaw’s face. “You can’t keep me safe from life, North. I just need to figure out how to handle things better.” He leaned across the car and kissed North. North caught the back of his head and kissed him again, deeper.

  “I’m not going home, dumbass. Let’s get inside and—”

  He cut off; the sound of his phone vibrating filled the car. After a moment, he retrieved the phone, and Shaw watched as hatred stripped North’s face down to the bones.

  “He’s just messing with you,” Shaw said. “He’s trying to get a reaction out of you. The best thing to do is just dismiss the call.”

  “Right,” North said. The screen’s glow washed out his face, highlighting sharp angles and leaving deep shadows.

  “North, just dismiss the call. Or ignore him.”

  The phone made the decision for them and sent the call to voicemail.

  Shaw let out a breath.

  The phone began to buzz again.

  “That little shit,” North said.

  “Hey, you know what, I think it would be a good idea if you came in and took care of me—”

  “What?” North pressed the phone to his ear. “What the fuck do you want, you fucking asshole? Do you have any fucking idea what time it is? I’ll talk to you however I want, you great big bleeding hemorrhoid. Hurry up and tell me what’s so fucking important that you have to call me over and over again, when you know perfectly fucking well that we’re not supposed to be talking.”

  When Shaw opened the car door, North glanced up, his face a furious mask, and held up a finger.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind? What kind of fucking claim do you think you have on my half of Borealis?” Cutting laughter burst out of North, and he raised his voice. “No, you listen to me you bag of syphilitic dicks. You are not getting one fucking cent of Borealis—”

  Shaw had heard this one before. He got out of the car, shut the door, and headed inside. As he was setting the deadbolt, he heard a savage scream from North, and he closed his eyes and let his head rest against the jamb. A few minutes later, he heard the GTO rumble to life, and then North was leaving, the engine growing fainter, and the garage door rattling down.

  Upstairs, Shaw stripped and thought he could still smell Hiwet’s loose bowels and the toner-and-burnt-coffee fetor of the police station. He showered, tied his hair back again, and crawled into bed naked.

  He woke to the smell of Pari burning something in the toaster. Shaw flopped onto his back, took a deep breath, and began to cough. Sitting up, he blinked, trying to clear his stinging, watering eyes. For a disorienting moment, he thought he was crying again, and his first, clearest thought was that North would be upset, so he needed to stop crying. Then he realized that the room was full of smoke.

  Adrenaline rushed through him, high-octane fuel for his brain, and he threw back the bedding. The floor was warm underfoot, bordering on hot, and his next breath brought another round of vicious coughing. Shaw dropped onto the superheated boards, crawled to a dresser, and pulled out the first things he could grab: a khaki short-sleeve button-up and unicorn-embroidered hot pants. Socks and fleece Chucks completed the outfit. Then he grabbed his phone and wallet, made sure the Aldrich Acquisitions access card was still tucked behind his credit cards, and crawled to the door that led to the back stairs. He touched the handle, which was hot, and fanned away the smoke boiling up at the bottom of the door.

  Shaw reversed course and headed toward the front of the building. The house had originally been a duplex, with a top unit and a bottom unit, which meant it still had two front doors. Shaw rarely used the front door that led upstairs, preferring instead to come up through kitchen, but the door was perfectly functional. As he moved away from the bedroom, the haze of smoke thinned, and Shaw got to his feet and jogged down the hall. His lungs burned as he inhaled the hot, suspended particles of soot and tar, but he managed to avoid another coughing fit. He threw open the door, ran down the stairs, and turned the handle on the door that led out to the street.

  The handle turned, but the door wouldn’t open.

  Shock paralyzed Shaw for a moment. He tried again, yanking on the handle, part of his brain telling him that maybe the door was just stuck. The handle turned easily, but when Shaw pulled, the door refused to budge. Wood groaned on the other side of the frame, and then Shaw understood: the door had been boarded shut.

  Heat radiated through the drywall, and smoke wisped across the ceiling. Shaw gave the door one last tug and headed back upstairs. He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but the stair treads felt like they gave slightly underfoot, as though the fire were already eating away at them. In a half-crouch, he jogged across the living room, cut into the bathroom, and shoved the window open. Cold, wet air—clean, with the tang of rust—rushed in off the fire escape. It smelled better than anything in Shaw’s entire life. An animal hope reared its head. Escape. Away from the fire, away from the smoke, out into the dew and the night breeze. For a wild moment, Shaw wanted to laugh; it was a two-story building. Why the fuck did it have a fire escape? Then he was pulling himself up onto the sill.

  A gun cracked, the sound audible even over the roar of the burning building. Splinters sprayed the side of Shaw’s face. Blood ran down his temple, hot, stinking. He stumbled back from the window, tripped, and landed half in and half out of the tub. He lay there, back aching where the cast iron had caught him, and stared at the chunk of the window frame that a bullet had ripped out.

  Someone was out there, his brain told him, as though enjoying stating the obvious. Someone was out there waiting to kill him if he tried to escape the fire.

  After another stunned moment, Shaw dragged himself out of the tub and lay on the floor, eye to eye with a rubber ducky and a bottle of Mane ’n Tail. The tile might as well have been a griddle. No more gunshots. Nothing but the sound of the flames. How had no one noticed that his house was on fire? All the neighbors, all the traffic on Gravois. How had nobody noticed? Why wasn’t anybody helping?

  Hearing that note of helpless panic in his own thoughts made Shaw stop and draw in a sooty breath. He drew in two more, summoning the mantra that Master Hermes had revealed to him, counting his breaths like Dr. Farr had made him practice. And then he was back. He pulled the phone from his pocket and called 911. He gave his address, reported the fire, and warned of a gunman, and then he disconnected. He called North next. It rang until it went to voicemail. He called again, and he got voicemail again.

  “Someone’s set the house on fire,” Shaw said. “They’ve got a gun, and I’m pinned down. Be careful.”

  As he was disconnecting, he had the brief but all-consuming thought that maybe North wasn’t answering his phone because he had problems of his own. Fear locked Shaw in place for a heartbeat before he made himself start moving again; he couldn’t do anything for North until he got himself out of this situation.

  Army-crawling back into the hall, Shaw grimaced at the thicker pall of smoke that blanketed everything. Even on the floor, he had trouble getting enough air, and what he did get was too hot and too thin. His brain raced ahead, trying out possibilities. He couldn’t go down the back stairs; the fire would only have gotten worse in the last few minutes, and he’d never make it out that way. He couldn’t go down the fire escape without risking being shot. If worse came to worst, that’s what Shaw would have to do—at least he’d have a chance if he moved fast. If he stayed here, he would die.

  His brain kept running down the same dead-ends: the burning building, the boarded-up door, the shooter watching the fire escape. And then Shaw drew in another shallow, ashy breath, and dragged himself toward the bedroom. The shooter. One shooter? Or two? Or three? Or a dozen? How many men did you send to murder a private investigator? Shaw’s gut told him one. Maybe two, but one would be better because the more people involved, the messier it got. And of course the shooter would have chosen to watch the fire escape, to wait until Shaw tried to go through the window. It was the most reasonable exit.

  But if there was only one shooter, then Shaw might be able to make it out another window. The only issue was getting down without breaking a leg.

  Shaw got onto his knees and opened the window that looked out over the alley. This time, the air had a hint of garbage and the yeasty sourness of the brewery. No movement. Shaw stood. No gunshot. He sucked in a breath of the relatively clean air, sprinted across the room, and stripped the sheet from the bed. Back at the window, he tied one end of the sheet around a leg of the dresser. Then he flung the rest of the sheet out into the night. It wasn’t nearly long enough—the sheet was probably ninety inches long, and some of that length had been used up in tying a knot. Shaw considered the remaining distance to the ground. He shoved the dresser closer to the window. Then he flipped the dresser so that the legs were up in the air. He gauged the distance again and figured he’d earned himself an extra foot of improvised rope.

  He pulled himself up onto the sill, rolled onto his belly, and a frisson ran up his spine; if someone were going to shoot, now was the time. But no shot came. Shaw clutched the sheet and began to lower himself. His chin scraped against the sill. He scrabbled for purchase between the bricks with his Chucks, and the rubber soles offered a decent grip. Then he reached the end of the sheet.

  The night air seemed much colder now, brushing bare skin where his shirt rode up. His feet swung in the emptiness. Shaw cast a final glance down. Shadows made it difficult to tell, but he guessed that there were still eight feet between the Chucks and the alley’s brick pavement. He counted to three and let go.

  When he hit the ground, the landing drove spiking pain through his feet and up into his knees. But a moment later, in the surge of adrenaline, he barely noticed. He could stand. He took a few steps. He could walk. He started down the alley; the heat of his burning home slapped him in the back.

  Faintly, in the distance, sirens.

  Headlights swung into view at the mouth of the alley, and then a car sped toward Shaw, bouncing on the uneven bricks. Shaw stumbled back, started to turn, and caught a hint of green. Springmist Green. Original color of the 1968 GTO.

  Brakes squealing, the GTO skidded to a halt, and North stumbled out barefoot, in boxers and a Chouteau College tank top. He had the CZ in his hand, and he brought the pistol up as he sprinted around the car toward Shaw.

  “I’m ok,” Shaw said.

  North caught his arm, yanked him toward the car, and shoved him into the passenger seat. A moment later, they were flying down the alley, and then out into the south side’s warren of shadows and orange-gray vapor light.

  Chapter 19

  THEY SPENT THE NIGHT in a motel south of the city, on an abandoned frontage road outside of Arnold. The lamp shades were shaggy with dust, and the room smelled like cigarettes and microwaved lasagna, and the curtains were printed with Underdog, sun-faded until they looked like watercolors. On the all-purpose dresser and TV stand, someone had burned a meticulous pattern of circles from the tip of a cigarette to form the word C*NT; someone else had scratched out the U with a knife.

  The hyper-alertness of the adrenaline gave out as soon as Shaw made it through the door, and he could barely keep his eyes open. He was vaguely aware of North undressing him, aware of the small sounds of discomfort he made when North popped off his Chucks, aware of North settling him in the bed and then pulling Shaw’s legs across his lap so he could massage Shaw’s aching feet and ankles. And then exhaustion hit, dragging Shaw down into something that was sleep, but restless and stalked by dreams.

  He woke once in the night, the heat of the flames very real on his skin, smoke choking him, and then understood that the flames had been a dream. But this, too, this felt like a dream: a chink in the curtain; light from the highway dusting everything; North upright in a chair, the CZ on the table next to him. The smell of cigarette smoke in the small room seemed stronger. North’s eyes had an icy glitter. It was all unreal, all of it, the slow swivel of North’s head to take in Shaw, and the utter motionless of the rest of the universe, and the silence a hissing white noise like an ash cloud.

  “Go back to sleep,” North said in a stranger’s voice.

  And to Shaw’s surprise, he did.

  When he woke again, late morning light made its way through the gap in the curtains. On the other side of the thin door, North was talking on the phone.

  “And I told you, we’ll be in to make a fucking statement when we can get there. Someone tried to murder him last night. I’m not going to—don’t fucking interrupt me!”

  Shaw stumbled out of bed, wincing at the ache in his heels, and opened the door.

  Phone to his ear, North scowled at him. “You’re naked.” Into the phone, he added, “For fuck’s sake, of course I’m not talking to you.”

  “That explains why I’m chilly. Although maybe it’s a good thing. Benjamin Franklin believed that air baths—”

  “Shower. Now. I ran to the Dollar General this morning and picked up something for us to wear that doesn’t smell like burned rayon.”

  Shaw tapped his lips.

  Growling, North leaned in and pecked him once. Shaw turned for the tiny bathroom, and he was surprised by a slap to his ass. When he grinned over his shoulder, North just tried to make an even scarier face and shouted into the phone, “I don’t know what you want me to say. We’ll be there when we’ll be there. If you don’t have anything useful to tell me, quit wasting my fucking time.”

  Shaw shut himself in the bathroom, wondering if North had been trading conversational tips with Emery again. He ran the water and sat on the toilet while he waited for it to get hot. It only made it to lukewarm, so he unwrapped the silver-dollar-sized soap and stepped under the spray. He was working the bar across his shoulders when the door opened.

  North stripped off the Chouteau tank with one hand and tossed it behind him. He hooked his thumbs in the boxers’ waistband and hopped out of them. Then he stepped into the tub, his bigger body framing Shaw against the fiberglass panel. Water flecked his face, and North blinked into it. He ran his hands down Shaw’s arms and settled them at his waist. Then he pulled Shaw against him in a crushing embrace. He was shaking, Shaw realized, and when Shaw rubbed his back, he pressed his face into Shaw’s neck and shook harder.